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On Covid 19; According to the CDC it’s over May 24, 2020

Posted by shaferfinancial in Covid 19, Interesting Reading, paradigm shift, Retirement Income, trust, Uncategorized.
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It’s hard to reconcile seemingly conflicting information/data coming in at the same time. So, I’m sure when people see this, there won’t be much they will find that is believable. But, pandemics go in stages.  1st stage is community spread, where an infected person enters the community and it spreads from person to person.  Then the virus burns out for several reasons some known and some unknown. Seasonal affects. Enough cross immunity is developed. The people who are going to get sick from the virus have already gotten sick. Etc. Finally, there are usually smaller waves that come into a community annually or occasionally. During all this the virus mutates into different forms which usually are less virulent forms of the virus. But it is impossible to predict when and how bad the waves will be.


Update: I was wrong.  The waves are very large in several states.  Mostly young and unaffected folks are getting infected and spreading this.  Also some small rural communities of mostly minority population are see high rates of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Fortunately, overall, the hospitalizations and deaths per infection are going down significantly.  Unfortunately, the fear mongering is not.  Some front line workers and scientist think the virus has mutated to a more infectious, but less virulent form. Hopefully they are correct.


nchs-mortality-report.gif (900×580)


Look at the above graph from the CDC.  Note the spike in Pneumonia, Influenza and Covid mortality. When we reach the peak of the curve (about 3-4 weeks ago, was when the epidemic in the USA was essentially over. Now we are just dealing with the fallout. Note the sharp decline over the last 3 weeks. That is another indicator that community transmission of the virus was done.

But, how can this be?  Aren’t people still getting infected and dying???

Yes.  Again aftermath of the viral spread. Deaths are 2-4 weeks after infection. When a person tests positive for the viral infection, that is 3-7 days after infection. The majority of new infections are from institutions like nursing homes and prisons.  Doesn’t this mean the pandemic is still going strong?  No, it means that moved to a cluster phase, where people not in the general public or have jobs that get them large viral loading are getting infected.


What other proof is there. Well Emergency Room Visits are way down.



These are the CDC charts for ER visits. Notice the peak was around week 14-15 of the year. So middle of April. Note, that in the second chart that combines all influenza like illnesses (ILI), we are now below baseline. This indicates we are now below normal for emergency room visits for ILI’s. Most of the remaining COVID visits from the first chart are probably from nursing home and prison clusters along with health care workers and prison guards.  This is the last remnants of the viral epidemic that remains.

Please note, we are probably going to live with this virus for a long time, vaccine or no vaccine. Time will tell if it will fade into the tapestry of ILI’s, peaking in the winter and fading into the summer.


So, now you are probably pointing to all this and saying look how well the shelter in place is working. Well, there is an increasing amount of evidence that mitigation strategies didn’t mitigate much.  And there seems to be one item they can say by comparing different countries with different mitigation strategies. That is there is no scientific evidence that shelter-in-place worked to avoid the spread of Covid.

And just for fun, here is an article detailing how this strategy came into being in the USA. There is a link to the scientific paper written by epidemiologist of the time (2006).


Here is a key paragraph:



“Travel restrictions, such as closing airports and screening travelers at borders, have historically been ineffective. The World Health Organization Writing Group concluded that “screening and quarantining entering travelers at international borders did not substantially delay virus introduction in past pandemics . . . and will likely be even less effective in the modern era.”… It is reasonable to assume that the economic costs of shutting down air or train travel would be very high, and the societal costs involved in interrupting all air or train travel would be extreme. …”


“During seasonal influenza epidemics, public events with an expected large attendance have sometimes been cancelled or postponed, the rationale being to decrease the number of contacts with those who might be contagious. There are, however, no certain indications that these actions have had any definitive effect on the severity or duration of an epidemic.”

Happy reading…….

The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea